Do Health Games Need to be Interactive?
Adam Bishop’s feature post last week for the Gamasutra blog entitled Things Games “Must” Be takes an interesting stance on the conventional wisdom that video games should be fun, non-political, and interactive. Adam basically says “Let’s not pigeon-hole games.” In many respects, I think Adam’s article is a good case for serious games, like health and social issue games, that go against the traditional video game architecture.
But shouldn’t they be interactive?
I’m completely on board with Adam’s idea that games don’t necessarily have to be full of fun and non-biased. Many health games are not fun, they’re educational and designed to change behavior. We hope they will be fun, but they don’t always turn out that way. The player knows this is not going to be Grand Theft Auto. Furthermore, games shouldn’t be political? Who came up with that idea? There are plenty of social issue games out there from Fatworld to A Force More Powerful that clearly take a political stance and are clearly still games.
But what about interactivity? Isn’t that what makes a video game different? Adam says, “What I’m against is the idea that, because interaction is the defining aspect of games, that games must always focus on interaction.”
Although all of the comments I read at the bottom of this article take Bishop’s side, I’m not completely sold on this last one. I think to have a successful health game, you at least need a high level of interactivity. What do you think? Do you agree with Adam that a good health game doesn’t necessarily need to be interactive?
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I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘interactive’ as I think HopeLab did a great job of crowdsourcing games to get kids moving that were ‘interactive games’ but hands-on versus computer driven…or in many cases, using online to offline bridges, which as you know, I’m a HUGE fan of experimenting with…(what better way to get kids to ‘unplug’ than to reach them ‘where they are’ and motivate them to get up and get out in applied sciences mode…? )
Look at Ruckus Nation and some of the cool concepts coming out of there…Games? Definitely. Interactive? You betcha. But not exclusively digital nor data driven…More of a mashup of ideas instead.
As you can see by my piece on the Ruckus Nation winners: http://blog.shapingyouth.org/?p=1243
I really LIKE this ‘open source/put your heads together’ style of thinking! (especially since as you say, sometimes the best ‘theories’ don’t execute as well in one platform vs. another; I’m frustratingly finding that out firsthand right now!)
Great site…keep it up! Will add it to the Shaping Youth blogroll pronto! Congrats!
Yesterday my brother took a video of his kids while they were playing Wii. I was supposed to watch it from his laptop, but I had no time. I was running from here and there. Luckily my brother’s laptop is equipped with dvd duplication drive, so I was able to make a copy of the video.
I watched the video. The kids were playing Wii Sports Boxing. It was incredible. The little boys were practically moving around, air punching, and sweating.
I think some Wii games can actually fit as a health game. Promoting mind and body coordination.